


i've passed on now to the eyes of a dark, lost blue

by sxldato



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fever, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt Neal, Hurt/Comfort, Nudity, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3803911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal has a high fever and hallucinates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've passed on now to the eyes of a dark, lost blue

**Author's Note:**

> so i have a lot of feelings about neal mistaking elizabeth for kate because oUCH??? OW  
> there's really not a lot i can say about this i mean i wrote it in like a day and a half so is it even good? i don't know. if it's bad i'll take it down but for now just fuck it  
> no puking in this story lmao sorry for the let-down  
> unbeta'd. i'll go over it in english class today probably idk  
> title is from Firelight by Young the Giant

The first thing he was consciously aware of was the mound of blankets he’d piled on top of himself being pulled off of him. His muscles had the same amount of strength as overcooked noodles, but he made a feeble attempt to keep the warmth around him by reaching out blindly with his hand. “No—ugh, stop, ‘m cold—“

When he hit someone else’s arm, he forced his eyes open. It was hard to focus, but he could make out long brown hair thrown over one of the figure’s shoulders and the bright, piercing blue that must have been their eyes.

“Neal?”

He was shivering and drenched in a cold sweat, but his heart was soaring. “Kate,” he breathed, relief easing the tension and ache in his muscles. “Kate, I’m—I can’t believe you’re here, I’ve missed you so much…”

“We need to cool you down. I’ve got a bath ready down the hall, but you need to get up.”

She helped him into a sitting position and the world swam around him. He took one of her hands, pulling it close to him. His fingers brushed against a metal band on one of her fingers, and for a moment, just a split second, he faltered. But then the confusion was over. “You’ll stay with me?”

“I don’t exactly trust you not to drown in the bathtub right now, so yes, I will be with you the whole time.”

“… Kay.”

The journey to the bathroom was long and arduous, considering the small shuffling movements of his feet and the feeling that he could collapse at any given moment. But Kate had an arm wrapped around him and was carrying a solid portion of his weight as they slowly made their way down the hall, so he wasn’t afraid of falling.

“Where were you, Kate?” He asked. “I was looking… looking _all_ _over_ for you… Why’d you have to run, Kate? Why’d you have to…?”

“Just relax. Focus on walking.”

Her hand rubbed up and down his arm and he involuntarily leaned into her. God, he’d missed her. He hoped she knew that, and how badly he was in love with her. He hoped it was the kind of love that she could feel without him saying it.

Once they reached the bathroom, his legs had decided that they were done functioning properly, and he stumbled and collapsed onto the tile.

“Neal!”

“’M okay,” he mumbled, keeping his cheek pressed to the mercifully cool floor.

She hauled him up and propped him against the side of the tub, searching him for any bumps or grazes. Her hand kept going back to his forehead, checking his temperature while brushing away the damp pieces of hair that stuck to his skin.  

“Kate,” he groaned. His skull felt too small for his brain, and his lips were cracked from dehydration. “Kate, I’m…” It wore him out to speak, so he just touched his trembling fingers to his mouth.

“You need water,” she said. “Hold on.”

He couldn’t keep his eyes open, could barely keep his head up, and he waited in the darkness behind his eyelids for her to return. It felt like seconds and years had flown by before a cool glass was pressed to his lips. His eyes fluttered and he was granted the reprieve that came with seeing her.

She ran her fingers through his hair as she helped him drink. Her hands were soft and the water was a blessing on his throat. When Kate set the glass down, he mustered up the strength to force out the slurred words, “I love you.”

She smiled and pressed her lips to his forehead. “I love you too, but you have to get undressed now, okay?”

He nodded and began to struggle with peeling his shirt from his body. He could only get it up to his shoulders before Kate had to step in and get it off the rest of the way. He pulled down his pair of drawstring pajama pants to his ankles and kicked his feet out of them. There was something wrong though, something that took a minute for him to place.

“Those aren’t my pants,” he said, blinking blearily up at her as she pulled him to his feet.

“Peter let you borrow his.”

Neal’s brow furrowed. “What? But…” Nothing was making sense. “Why would Peter be here? Why… why do you have Peter’s pants, Kate?”

“Don’t worry about it right now, alright? It’s all gonna be okay.”

He trusted her; he didn’t care if she’d left him, he didn’t care about any of it. All he cared about was that she was with him now, and that she was _here_.

The coldness of the bath didn’t hit him until he was sitting down all the way. He grabbed Kate’s arm, trying to push himself out, but he was too weak. “C-cold, it’s cold…”

“It’s not cold, I promise. You’ve just got a bad fever.” She guided him back into the water, resting his head against the edge of the tub. “Try and relax. I’ll be right here with you the whole time.”

“You won’t leave me?” He asked, unable to stop the words from leaving his mouth.

“Of course not.”

“But you… But you did…” His eyes stung. “You left me cause I wasn’t good enough—I’m sorry I wasn’t, I’m sorry I ruined everything for you…”

“Neal, you didn’t. You didn’t ruin anything. I knew what I was getting into and I could have left any time I wanted. Being with you was my decision, and I don’t regret it.”

He hadn’t realized he’d started to cry until she was wiping his tears away with her thumb. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, trying his hardest not to choke on the words. “I’m sorry, Kate, I’m so sorry…”

“I know, you are, sweetheart, I know. It’s okay.”

Fatigue rolled over him like a thick blanket. “Don’t leave, don’t leave me… don’t leave me again…”

“I’m right here, Neal, I’m staying right here.”

He raised his hand out of the water and draped it over the side, waiting for her to take it before he let himself succumb to exhaustion. He slipped into sleep, despite the deep-set fear in his body that he’d never see her eyes again.

-

The water was warmer when he woke up, and beads of sweat were running down his face. The throbbing in his head still remained, but the shivering and persistent coldness had faded. He sat up gingerly, sending ripples through the bath. There was someone sitting beside him, someone he knew, but he couldn’t concentrate long enough to see who it was. He was still trying to get his bearings.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” he muttered, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “Did my fever break?”

“I think it might have. Let’s get you dried off, alright?”

Neal tensed at the contact of the person’s hands on his shoulders, but he didn’t shy away. He shakily got to his feet and stepped out of the tub, dripping water everywhere. His hunched his shoulders, shielding himself as best he could, afraid from his defenselessness; but then a large bath towel was wrapped around him and he felt a little less exposed, a little more safe.

“Was I asleep for long?” They were going back down the hallway, towards a bedroom that was not his, a bedroom that would _never_ be his.

“Not more than a half hour, I’d say,” she said—a woman, it was a woman. The gaps in his brain were rapidly filling themselves. The anklet weighing down one of his feet, the familiar yet foreign atmosphere that came with the Burke household—

“This is your house,” Neal said, knowing how ridiculous he sounded but wanting confirmation anyways.

“Mhm. Peter and I live here together.”

“You and…” He didn’t like where this was going, and he didn’t like how much it was starting to make sense. He was the government’s property, the tracking anklet acting as nothing more than an animal tag. But he’d been looking for Kate, and Kate had been there with him before—

Peter had a wife. Peter had a wife who had the same color eyes as Kate did.

Neal stopped on the threshold of the bedroom. “Wait, wait.”

“What’s wrong?”

He took the woman he thought--he _knew_ \-- had been Kate, and forcing himself to really look at her. “Elizabeth?”

There was a flicker of surprise in her face, but then it was gone, replaced with sorrow. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she said, her eyes—he couldn’t look at her eyes, not right now, not with Kate fresh in his memory—filled with pity. “I didn’t want to tell you I wasn’t her, not when you were like that.”

“You let me think you were her.” The past couple hours were a haze, but things were starting to trickle back, and Neal was starting to remember all that he’d said to her-- to _Elizabeth_ , not Kate. The words “I love you” had left his mouth. Shame filled up his chest like a rising tide, and he feared he would drown.

“Would you have even believed me if I’d said I wasn’t?” Elizabeth pointed out. She was helping him over to the bed, and while he didn’t want to go anywhere right now, he was in no position to be making objections. “You were convinced she was here, and with the frame of mind you were in, I figured telling you otherwise would be pointless.”

The worst thing was that Neal understood, that he couldn’t honestly say that he wouldn’t have done the same thing to himself. So all he could do was sit there on the edge of Peter and Elizabeth’s bed, his pride stomped into the ground, and newly found grief twisting his stomach.

_That_ was the worst thing; he had to deal with Kate’s death all over again because a fevered delusion had made him forget it.

Neal counted his blessings that he was too tired to cry, because he didn’t want to break down in front of Elizabeth any more than he already had. Watching someone with the emotional strength of a brick wall break down was scary, and he didn’t want to scare Elizabeth.

“I’m sorry you had to…” He trailed off, drawing the towel tighter around himself, unsure of what to say. He couldn’t even look at her; he didn’t trust himself not to see Kate, even if the fever had gone down.

“It was my choice,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t have to play along; I chose to. I thought…” Neal heard her take a small breath before continuing. “I thought giving you a few moments where you didn’t feel so tortured would be a good thing to do.”

“It was,” he assured her. “Even if it wasn’t real, I was…”

“I know,” Elizabeth filled the silence for him, preventing him from having to speak further. “How are you now, though? Are you feeling any better?”

There was a strange sort of clarity that came after such a deep hallucination, and he felt a lot less ill. But the grief that was burrowing into his head, the strain it put on his heart, his _bones_ —that hurt. And he wasn’t okay. He shrugged, leaving it up to Elizabeth to decipher because he figured she already knew.

“You should dry off, and I’ll get you some clothes.”

His hair was still dripping water down the back of his neck when he’d gotten a fresh pair of clothes on, but he could only raise his arms to dry his hair for so long before they got worn out. Elizabeth found another towel, a smaller one, and rubbed it over Neal’s wet curls until they were only marginally damp.

“You won’t tell Peter, will you?”

She paused in setting up all the pillows on one side of the bed. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you to.”

“Then I won’t, simple as that.” She leaned over and kissed him on the crown of his head. “But you should get some more sleep.”

He wasn’t opposed to burrowing under the soft layers of sheets and blankets, especially not since his muscles were aching for rest. But he didn’t want to fall asleep and wake up in another delirium. He didn’t think he had it in him to go through something like that twice.

“What if the fever spikes and it happens again?”

“What do you mean? If you think I’m Kate?”

He nodded. “I don’t… I know this is unfair coming from me, but I don’t want you to lie to me again.”

She was smoothing his hair down and the gentle touch of her hand was lulling him to sleep. “Then I’ll tell you the truth.”

Neal let his eyes close. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”

“And Neal?”

“Yeah.”

“All you have to do is ask.”

He opened his eyes again to look at her, and he didn’t have to ask what she meant. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

He hadn’t even said it and it was hurting him on the inside, but he wanted to tell her. He needed to. “Your eyes… they look the same… Stunning… ”

Elizabeth smiled. “I know Peter met her, but I never did. She sounded wonderful.”

Neal swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”

“I know, honey. And I wish I could say it gets easier with time, but the truth is I don’t know.” She was quiet for a moment, and then when it was clear that Neal wasn’t going to respond, she said, “I’d be more than happy for you to talk about her, if that’s something you’d want to do.”

The problem was that there were so many things he could say about Kate Moreau, so many things he’d forget and then remember in the morning, so many things that were too private to share. And almost all them would hit spots in his heart that were still too tender. He knew the right thing to do for dead loved ones was to talk about them, carry their soul from person to person, but he couldn’t, at least not today.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could manage. "I can't, I don't--" 

“You don’t have to,” Elizabeth replied. “Just rest. I’ll be here.”

Without him saying anything or even moving, she reached for one of his hands and held onto it. Sleep was easy when grief weighed down his chest and illness had weakened his bones, and he didn’t fight it when it came. There would come a day when he’d close his eyes and not see the color of hers, and that day was one he was dreading.

For now, though, he would slip off and hold onto that part of her as long as he could, until time had it fade away.

**Author's Note:**

> prompts are always welcome just hit me up in the comments


End file.
